Since last year’s makeover, cable channel Trio has become an oddball haven for TV fans. Now comes its first series: Pilot Season, an improv comedy that examines the television industry from the inside.
Based on the largely unwatched film Who’s the Caboose?, the series is the work of the largely unknown Sam Seder, who co-writes, directs, and stars. “Trio had aired my show Beat Cops on their series Brilliant But Cancelled, and [network president] Lauren Zalaznick liked it so much that she wanted to see Who’s the Caboose?,” Seder explains. Impressed, Zalaznick asked Seder to adapt the project. The result is a bitterly funny Hollywood satire featuring a cult-comedy ensemble—including Sarah Silverman, Andy Dick, and Mr. Show’s David Cross—portraying the kind of two-faced industry types with whom they are all too familiar. Still, Seder saves the most cringe-inducing part for himself, that of a clueless, Xanax-popping celebrity manager with no real clients, who spends most of his time stalking his disdainful (and much more successful) ex-girlfriend, played by Silverman, who, in an incestuous twist, is his successful ex-girlfriend in real life as well.
But for Seder (younger and fitter in the original film), that wasn’t the hardest part: “I had to wear a huge fat suit,” he laments. Really? “No. Well, I did,” he deadpans, “but it was made from my own flesh.”
Pilot Season, Trio; premieres September 6, 9 p.m.